


Should Burn and Rave at Close of Day

by Culumacilinte



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Internal Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-01
Updated: 2009-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-15 03:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/pseuds/Culumacilinte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she's awake, River is herself. When she sleeps, she doesn't know who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should Burn and Rave at Close of Day

They won’t lie down.

It’s what they are, the ones that won’t lie down. Like rabid dogs, even when they’re bleeding out into the dirt, they still struggle and foam and bark. There’s no reason to them, only that command, writ down to the core of them, to _stay up_. Never, ever lie down.

It’s in River too. Her mind, her body, her blood, and she can see it, feel it when she shouldn’t. It’s in the air, pumped through ventilator systems and purifiers and it’s _good_ , it’s safe. Peaceful. They meant so well. So well. 0,07 litres of blood a minute, the heart beats 70 times a minute, and the numbers line themselves up in her head:

0,07 × 70 = 4,9 ltr.

Less than a minute, once it’s inhaled, for the Pax to work its way through the human bloodstream, to seep out into every cell and infect it, cease the activity of every tiny organelle, every twist of DNA, RNA, replication and movement and life, succumbing to stillness. And that’s for an adult. In a child, it will only take about 30 seconds.

She can see it, and she’s part of it even though she never was. River can see a perfectly sunny day, sweet apple grass and shade under the trees, and two little boys playing. One of them has hair the colour of coal, and the other eyes the colour of bright grey skies, and they’re laughing together, playing under the trees, tag and purple-against-brown, scrambling over roots and giggling when they fall and stain their knees with green. Everything is beautiful.

But River can see what it really is. The black-haired boy will lie down, so tired after his play, so nice to rest under the shade of the trees, and his friend will frown at him. But he won’t get up, he won’t ever get up, and the sky-eyed boy will shout at him, hit him to rouse him, wake him. There’s a rock in the dirt that River can see, and the boy will snatch it up and shout at his sleeping friend, hit him with it, over and over and over until his skull is mashed and red, and the tree trunk is smeared with blood and brain matter, and his tears turn into anger.

The sky-eyed boy will grow up into a man who isn’t a man. Who cuts on his face and whose very flesh is poison, burnt black with radiation. And he will never, never lie down. Right now he’s just a boy, but she can see it. Cause and effect, every potential future hacked down to one, and that’s wrong.

G-23 paxilon hydrochlorate. They meant so well.

River isn’t a Reaver. Es and As and Is, vowel sounds that little girls have to memorise, not all that different, each one and all together. She isn’t a Reaver, but she can never, never lie down. The Pax in her blood, in her mind, will surely make her sleep if ever she lies down, and she rages against it, in rage and terror. She’s infected by it, by a toxin she’s never breathed or touched or seen, but it’s there in her system anyway, white and blind and so kind in its temptations to lie down and sleep.

 _Это курам на смех_ , Simon says, and she falls. He gives her porridge, makes the bugs crawl back into the cracks and draw cobwebs over her mind, and she forgets. He doesn’t realise, has no way of knowing. She’s like Miranda when she sleeps, white and still and dead, and when Simon draws out a syringe and whispers soothing words to her like she’s a child, River shakes and whimpers and pulls away. He thinks she’s afraid because young children are always afraid of needles and drugs, but River has a reason. River always has a reason, it’s just that nobody else can see them. She was always smarter than her brother, and she knows more now than she ever did before.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light, said a poet from Earth-that-was. Do not go gentle, no matter where you’re going. River rages, and she can never stop. She’s a person, no matter what Mal or Kaylee or even Simon says, but if she stops just for a moment, lies down and goes to sleep, she doesn’t know what she might be.

So she can't ever lie down.

Never.


End file.
